But baseball teams managed to trade Rusty Staubfive different times – even though anyone who has
ever met the man describes him as a terrific teammate and better human
being.

I’ve heard the same thing too, but not unanimously. There was a lone dissent, and it was a weird one. It came from Mickey Lolich, who — as I wrote a few years ago — I had the pleasure of meeting when I was a kid.

I won’t say Lolich was over the top about it or anything, but when my brother and I started asking him about players he liked and players he didn’t like, he brought up Staub in the latter camp. It was a weird little rant, but according to Lolich, Staub would use new batting gloves for almost
every at bat, throwing away the old one, and because of that people thought he was a prima donna.

Given that Staub and Lolich were never teammates — in fact, they were traded for one another — I can only assume Lolich got this second hand from guys he played with on the Mets. And its entirely possible that the story was infused with some weird resentment over the fact that Lolich flamed out almost immediately after the trade while Staub had several more productive years. No idea, really.

No point here, other than that Megdal’s Staub thing reminded me of the time I met Lolich, and for some reason it was the ballplayer meet-up I’ve had that I think about the most.

Another has-been who can’t let some preposterous – and in this case not even firsthand – grudge die years after the fact, and makes himself sound like an ambulatory rectum in the process. He reminds me of my distant cousin Lance. I never met the guy, but boy, what a schmuck he was….